Redwing
Redwing is the superhero moniker of prominent voting rights activist Valerie Holloway '''(b. March 25, 1990). Holloway, whose superpower is flight, founded the Wingwomen in 2010. '''Biography Holloway first became involved in the voting rights organization GerryRigged as a sophomore at Barnard College, where she was studying political science and sociology. She devoted much of her spare time to the organization, drafting and designing voter education pamphlets during the school year and distributing them around the country during her summer breaks. Elizabeth Watson, then-executive director, hired Holloway personally right out of college as her administrative assistant. A year later, Holloway stepped into the deputy director position following the election of Sandra-Marie Bernard to the U.S. Senate. When Watson retired eight months later, the organization’s board of directors unanimously decided Holloway should take the reins, despite some initial trepidation about her comparative youth (she had just turned 24 at the time). Soon after Holloway began volunteering with GerryRigged, in August 2010, she revealed that she was also the superhero Redwing. Redwing had founded the Wingwomen and recruited Annemarie Young AKA Topaz just two months before. In her statement, Holloway said that she saw no point in keeping her two identities separate when she was “working for the same ultimate goal both in and out of uniform.” In spite of that, though, she has to this day refused to reveal how she gained the ability to fly—or anything else about her personal life, for that matter. Career Holloway’s first credited victory as Redwing was against the Times Square Bandit, who she chased through Central Park before overtaking and capturing him behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That confrontation, and her subsequent testimony in the Bandit’s public trial, put her on international radar. Membership in GerryRigged subsequently increased by 352%, according to the organization’s end-of-year reports. Topaz and Moondust both joined her for the next operation, flushing out a white supremacist gang in Seattle before several of their number could carry out planned attacks on food banks and women’s shelters. After Seattle, the team was much more in demand, traveling around the globe to face down threat after threat. Slipshade joined the Wingwomen in January 2012, and Indigo came along a few months later; Holloway has said publicly that she was glad for the additional personnel, because having a slightly larger team made everybody’s job a little easier. During a speech at Madison Square Garden on October 6, 2013, Holloway narrowly avoided an assassination attempt by a sniper affiliated with L’Ombre Imminente. Topaz apprehended the sniper, and though he bit into a cyanide tablet and died before he could betray any information about the syndicate, evidence found on his person was enough to put the team on Ombre’s trail. Less than two months later, Holloway led the team in an assault on Ombre’s base and personally handcuffed their director, Michel Fontaine. Holloway has been the official face of the team since its inception, most often delivering statements on the team’s behalf in press conferences, although Indigo occasionally substituted for her before the Amcorp incident of 2014. She does not grant interviews often, though, preferring to focus on GerryRigged speaking engagements. Activism Holloway was among the first to respond when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, calling the decision “flagrantly irresponsible” and organizing an impromptu peaceful protest in the Washington Mall less than an hour after news of the decision broke. She addressed the rally’s attendees in costume as Redwing and later dispatched two known white supremacist protestors who came to the rally with the aim of inciting violence. Though voting rights and voter education is Holloway’s cause celébre, she has occasionally lent her voice to other social issues. She has testified on Capitol Hill in favor of increasing the CDC research budget, eliminating private prisons, and passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. __FORCETOC__